This whole Web-Two-Point-Oh thing

Day 111 - Flash Tuesday, originally uploaded by shobster.


Today while my mind drifted off during class (i should make a more conscious effort to sit at the front row so i pay more attention) i started browsing the news and stumbled upon an article on the trial of Kevin Underwood. This being the Age of Information where very few things can remain a mystery for more than however long it takes people to google things up, soon i found myself sucked into a virtually endless chasm of past news stories, following the trail(s) of information surrounding the case. Apparently Underwood murdered a 10-yr old girl who lived in an adjacent apartment unit in 2006, and later admitted to fantasizing about (and/or planning on) cannibalizing the corpse. That's obviously a disturbing case, but what really sucked me into the whole story was the fact that Underwood had been maintaining a blog since 2002, and to my surprise Blogger hadn't taken it down.

Just how creepy/trippy/disturbing is it to realize that as you browse through pages and pages of past archive, you are actually going through the mind of a murderer? That you are pretty much listening to his thoughts, written down into words instead of being spoken aloud to you? I found it all very intriguing... To think that instead of just knowing him as a part of a news story from halfway across the continent, i'm actually putting together a person to go with the name. And then to imagine that person sitting in his lonely apartment typing this whole thing up while ideas were brewing in his head and emotions were flowing from his heart... My head was spinning with excitement and sensory overload. This is a guy that would later bludgeon a child to death, slit her throat, and then go and chat with an online buddy as the corpse was left hanging to let the blood drains out. A murderer.

One particular thing about my discovery today really hit me in the face: This whole Web 2.0 thing... It's crazy if you think about it. It's SO EASY to broadcast yourself in any manner possible these days. Take a few photos, post them up on Flickr. Sign up for MySpace, put up photos and videos, go crazy. Think outloud and cast your thoughts out at CyberSpace. Write them up in a blog. Confess. Reveal. Ramble. Threaten. Whine. Rant. Rave. Do anything. It's the Web 2.0, Baby. You are your own publisher and marketer.

Apparently as i later learned through my information spelunking session, Kevin Underwood is only one of a few other murderers who had been maintaining an online persona(s) in various forms. Eric Harris of Columbine shooting had one. Jeff Weise had one. Jet Duncan had one. (Yep, i stormed through all of those tonight). Of course i'm not implying that online self broadcasting is the realm of psycopaths and the mentally disturbed. I mean, hey i'm on Flickr. You're reading this blog that i wrote. I have a FaceBook account. I broadcast myself and my existence through these channels. What i'm saying is, the existence of the Internet with its whole Web 2.0 resources truly enable people to dish out and dig in now more than ever in history, i think. Of course people have been taking photos and writing journals since who knows when, and serial killers and the Unabomber have been known to keep meticulous records of their thoughts, but never are we so connected and at the same time accessible to everyone else as we are right now through the Internet. S-C-A-R-Y, if you ask me. It's a bit unnerving (and also a good mind exercise) to think what people will rediscover about me 10 years down the line from now, the things that they can learn about me through my own words and photos...

Oh well. Sorry for the long read. On a brighter note, i went swimming again today and i weighed 164.4 lbs. Going down. Oh yeah i know that the first few weeks are easier (thanks, water loss!!), but i'm thrilled about it still.